When a Black minister spoke out against the Walker candidacy last month, the right wing yelled about the violation of IRS regulations against openly advocating political positions from the pulpit. The regulation says a church or charity could forfeit their tax exempt status by being openly and flagrantly political. Never mind that White ministers do this all the time.
Some White ministers even call for political violence from their pulpits but few call for their tax exempt status to be revoked when they commit such acts. The hypocrisy of the religious right is not surprising. The thing that befuddles me is that Black activists groups don’t call them out for their duplicity.
Imagine how mostly White Evangelicals have openly sided with Walker over an ordained Black minister. Imagine Walker referencing (or inappropriately referencing) the Bible one week and Vampires/Werewolves the next, when he is flashing fake police badges to validate his lie that he has the same arresting powers as a sworn police officers. Yet Evangelicals have not issues with Walker or the underlying racist rationale for supporting him. It is helpful to understand when and how the role of religious leaders became entrenched in modern day politics.
Aside from the fact that the early settlers in the new world were puritans (Christians with extreme beliefs), along with indentured slaves, and prisoners, religious doctrine was imposed on the inhabitants of the Americas by Columbus and all invading Europeans who followed. History shows that Christianity, as we know it, was spread by genocidal, colonizing, grifting Europeans going back to before the crusades of 1095. Murderous White Europeans brought the grace of Christianity and pandemic level diseases to the indigenous spiritual peoples that existed in the western hemisphere upon their arrival. Though those cultures had some rather barbaric religious traditions of their own, they did not include hemispheric wide genocide and dehumanizing colonization.
The pretext, for dogmatic racism is rooted in the practices of all the Abrahamic religions (Islam, Judaism and Christianity). Christianity was later formalized when it was adopted most notably by Roman Emperor Constantine the Great. He was the first Roman ruler (Italian) to convert to Christianity. As these religions moved across Africa, they all made it a practice to enslave enslave Black Africans.
“Forcing Religion on the Indigenous?
Another achievement that Columbus is awarded is the spread of Christianity, more specifically, the spread of Catholicism. Coming from a religious nation, Spain; the Catholic Monarchs, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, were in full support of the spread of Catholicism. Many Catholic figureheads, including Pope Leo XIII praised Columbus for bringing the truth to the Natives. Although the spread of religion can be seen as a good thing, his actions were harmful towards the Indigenous people. Columbus forced the Natives to convert to Christianity and to begin practicing this new religion against their desires.
Who’s to say that the Natives wanted to practice Catholicism? In order to advance his personal gains, Columbus disregarded the interest of the Natives and forced them to practice a foreign religion. “By his toil . . . hundreds of thousands of mortals have, from a state of blindness, been raised to the common level of the human race, reclaimed from savagery to gentleness and humanity, and, greatest of all, by the acquisition of those blessings of which Jesus Christ is the Author, they have been recalled from destruction to eternal life.” “The Catholic Venture of Christopher Columbus.” Catholicism.org, 10 Oct 2016,
The idea that Columbus did the Natives a favor by bringing the Christian religion to them in a very brutal and inhumane manner is totally ignored. This is much the same as as the brutality and harsh consequences of racist White Christian Nationalism is enacted today. Pro-Columbus advocates continue to praise him for his actions without the slightest regard for pain and suffering the wave of genocide that followed caused. The Natives are painted as savages that needed to be shown the truth of Jesus’s love. This idea gave justification to the brutality of murderous and other dehumanizing criminal actions taken by Columbus and other conquering, treasure seeking, and colonizing Europeans enacted.
I lay a premise here for a point of view that will not be popular. As I watched the recent Senatorial contest in Georgia, I was struck by the struggle for political office, that two Black American men experienced. Both both victims of the harsh imposition of Christianity on their persons and how that plays out in their differing characters. First I will admit that I am agnostic. I reject all Abrahamic religions which have historically been utilized in the colonization and enslavement of Nubian and other Black Africans.
Semitic Judaism, Arab Islamism, and European Christianity were the basis to colonize and enslave Black Africans for centuries. Abrahamic religions have not been kind to indigenous peoples and people of darker skin around the world. I would also point out that most dark skinned people in eastern cultures, such as India, New Zealand, or Australia are also treated unjustly. Dark skinned Africans, including those referred to as ‘Nubians’, have been colonized and enslaved under the Abrahamic religions, by Jews, Arabs, Assyrians, and Europeans for centuries.
It is with this backdrop that I took notice of the two Black candidates for the US Senate seat in Georgia. Both profess to be Christian. One is an ordained Baptist Minister and the other claims to be a born again evangelical Christian. One man has character that is above reproach the other man has a history with episode after episode of flawed character issues and highly questionable judgement.
In Georgia, White voters are told that the Black ordained minister who is a Democrat is less trustworthy to the cause of White Christians maintaining power than the handpicked Black Republican who is an habitual lair and violent abuser that White Evangelical voters found to be acceptable because they see no difference between the two Black men. One is no better than the other since the man of greater character and less flawed was not likely to conform to their desire to retain political power.
It strikes me that both men embrace a religious doctrine that was beat into the psyche of our enslaved African ancestors as well as the aboriginal peoples White Europeans colonized wherever they went. The brutal imposition of the Abrahamic religious doctrines has sadly become embedded into the DNA of their descendants today. It is ingrained in us along with the violence and haltered that European White Christians used as the building blocks of culture they instilled all over the colonized world. Although the two candidates could not be more different in their personal values, those values are still framed by the racially imposed doctrine of European Christian White Nationalism.
One man reflects the ideals of Christian attributes and the other reflects what appears to be its darker attributes. But make no mistake the doctrine was conceived and spread to make any person of color struggle to assert their humanity, seek justice, and enjoy the true freedom of basic equality within a truly diverse society.
A Reasonable Point of View 